And so Rainpaw properly begins her apprenticeship! Congratulations to her!! Plus she got to see her mom again <3 I hope all their dead clanmates are safe in Starclan and I wonder if any of them know more about what killed them...
(sorry for the repost, I saw something I had to fix aaaaa anyway more coming soon :3)
Finally, the last part of Moon 2 is out!! And i’ve sketched almost through Moon 5 so hopefully the next few shouldn’t take as long to get through. (Also if there’s drastic differences in the style and quality of the next few moons it’s because I’ve been sketching them since a few months ago)
Rainkit’s getting a little jealous of the fact that Flarepaw and Daisypaw are spending so much time together now that they’ve finally reached an understanding. She’s almost old enough to be an apprentice and pretty mature for her age, so they leave her to her own devices more and more while they go on patrol and train together. She misses when Flarepaw would pay more attention to her.
“I’m not nervous,” Daisypaw insists in a growl, and Rainpaw shoots her the barest hint of a disbelieving look. “No really, I’m not!” The trio of apprentices, the last surviving members of Whistleclan, make their way through the scraggly forest on the edge of the territory toward the Echocave. A full moon hangs in the sky far above them, a few wisps of cloud threatening to shroud it. “Full moon gatherings are a clan tradition, and just because I’ve never been to one before doesn’t mean I’m afraid. I’ve certainly faced worse…”
“Don’t worry Daisypaw, all apprentices are a little nervous before their first gathering,” Flarepaw adds from a foxlength ahead where he’s leading them along the river.
“Shut up, Flarepaw!” Daisypaw snarls at him, but he barely flinches. He’s been at the receiving end of her temper enough times by now to know when to stand his ground and when to run for cover. “Just because you’ve been to one gathering doesn’t make you an expert!”
“While that may be true, my one gathering is certainly more than your zero gatherings,” Flarepaw replies matter-of-factly. “And plus, my mentor Quailfreckle told me what to expect beforehand. All you really have to do is be quiet when the leaders are speaking. You can handle that, right?” Daisypaw glares at him, and he moves on quickly. “She even introduced me to a few warriors she was friendly with, and their apprentices, so I might know a few cats there.” Flarepaw doesn’t feel quite as enthusiastic as he sounds. He can’t quite remember the names of the cats Quailfreckle had pointed out to him, apart from the leaders anyway, and none of the apprentices he’d met seemed all that interested in hanging out with him. Most of what he remembered about the gathering was wanting to go home. But he reminds himself, for the thousandth time in these four long moons, to put on a brave face. He’s the oldest, the one with the most experience and knowledge, if only by a thin margin. He’s got to be there to reassure his clanmates.
“Since we don’t have a leader, none of us will be allowed to get up on the clan pillar, but we can still address the gathering from the ground. All we want to tell them is that a few members of Whistleclan survived the disaster and we’re not going anywhere. After we reintroduce ourselves at the gathering, we can start marking the borders again as well.” Flarepaw is a little apprehensive about that part. There’s only three of them, and one of them is a healer! They don’t exactly have the numbers to defend Whistleclan’s borders. But Daisypaw is already getting antsy from the lack of border patrols since the attack. It is part of the Warrior Code, and they’ve been failing in their duties as warriors, she insisted. Flarepaw didn’t really think it was worth it to remind her that they’re just a pawful of apprentices.
“I still wonder why none of the other clans sent anyone to find us,” Rainpaw pipes up, padding with quiet confidence between the trees. “We have no quarrel with any of them, they’re supposed to be our allies even! And yet they didn’t send a single scout to check if we’re okay.” She looks a little sad when she says this, and Flarepaw is reminded that, despite how much she’s grown, she’s still barely older than a kit.
“Well maybe they remembered that even though we’re not at war, we’re still separate clans, and at the end of the day, each clan needs to look after their own.” Daisypaw has some very strong ideas about when a clan should and shouldn’t seek to help another clan.
Rainpaw sighs. “I understand that Daisypaw, but there’s a difference between offering to take us in and checking if we’re even still alive!” After the disaster, Daisypaw hadn’t even considered going to another clan’s camp for protection, she hadn’t even let them leave Whistleclan territory, no matter how much the three of them wanted to escape the scene of the attack. At the time, Flarepaw hadn’t felt capable of arguing with her, and now they’ve figured out how to be self-sufficient, and he realizes Daisypaw was probably right. Whistleclan would have evaporated if they’d decided to join another clan or left their ancestors’ territory.
Flarepaw can see the mouth of the Echocave now, across the river that marks the edge of the neutral territory shared between the clans. The moon is high in the sky, and Flarepaw hopes they aren’t too late. As the Whistleclan apprentices approach the mouth of the cave, they fall silent. Flarepaw can’t hear the sound of voices from within. It sounds like there’s only one cat speaking, which means the leaders have already started giving their reports which means… their arrival will interrupt one of them. Damn, Flarepaw had really been hoping they could slip in quietly, but no such luck.
At the mouth of the Echocave, Flarepaw hesitates. He looks to Daisypaw for support, but her ears are down and she glares at him when he makes eye contact with her. So she’s just as scared as he is, then. “Remember what we talked about,” he says to neither of them in particular. Maybe he’s reminding himself. In the end, it’s Rainpaw who leads the way through the tunnel and into the cavernous chamber beyond.
One of the leaders, Shrikestar Flarepaw thinks, is speaking when they arrive, but she immediately spots them when they walk in, and pauses in her report. “Who are those young cats?”
“They smell of Whistleclan!” shouts a cat near the back of the crowd where the apprentices entered. Another cat, an apprentice by the look of him, leans in for a sniff but Daisypaw bares her teeth at him and he backs off in a hurry.
Every last cat in the cave is staring at them now, with expressions ranging from confusion to fear. Flarepaw isn’t sure why anyone would be afraid of three apprentices– alright maybe he understands being a little afraid of Daisypaw, but he doesn’t think he and Rainpaw are all that intimidating. Rainpaw, who’s standing there frozen and wide eyed under the heavy gaze of the thirty odd cats in the cavern beyond them. Flarepaw drapes his tail across her shoulders reassuringly and she jumps, before looking up at him with relief in her eyes.
Flarepaw looks up from Rainpaw’s gray-green gaze to scan the cavern, searching in vain for a familiar or friendly face, but he just doesn’t recognize anyone. The other clans’ healers are huddled to the left of the cave, and as Flarepaw watches, one of them lifts a paw and whispers something into another’s ear. None of them look particularly friendly, and something about the yellow apprentice’s big blue eyes are creeping him out, so he quickly glances somewhere else.
The four stalagmites, representing the four clans, each with one leader perched on top and a deputy at the base. He remembers the leaders’ names, at least. Shrikestar and Quillstar, the leaders of Heatherclan and Bluffclan are just as he remembers them. Shrikestar gazes down across the Echocave calculatingly, while Quillstar looks beyond baffled at the Whistleclan cats’ sudden appearance. And perched atop the highest stalagmite is the imposing form of Pidgeonstar. But wait, that’s not right… The tallest perch was where Briarstar had sat during the last gathering with Whistleclan in attendance. It looks like the leader of Thicketclan had taken the Whistleclan leader’s spot! For a moment, Flarepaw forgets himself. He glares up at Pigeonstar with as much menace as he can muster, but when the famously cold Thicketclan leader meets his eyes, they simply raise one brow, and suddenly Flarepaw remembers to be afraid of this cat.
“So, are you Whistleclan cats?” Shrikestar calls down to them, beckoning them forward with her tail. The three apprentices pad forward with trepidation, the crowd of other clan cats parting for them warily. Flarestar looks up to the dark furred leader, gulps, and nods.
“Yes,” he speaks in as loud and clear a voice as he can manage, “we are the last surviving members of Whistleclan.”
A whole new round of disquieted muttering breaks out at that particular pronouncement, but the Thicketclan leader silences them with a wave of their tail. “We will have silence at this gathering,” he says evenly, and the assorted clan cats hurry to quiet down. Pigeonstar continues. “One of Bluffclan’s healers went to check out the Whistleclan camp over four moons ago and he reported that he couldn’t find a trace of Whistleclan. Isn’t that right?” Pigeonstar looks over at Quillstar for confirmation, and the wizened leader nods.
“Yes, Juniperpaw told me themself that they could not find a single member of Whistleclan. He said that it seemed as though the clan had disappeared without a trace.”
Among the healers, the apprentice, Juniperpaw apparently, nods evenly. Something about him is just… off. Flarepaw just can't pin down the slippery feeling, but looking at the Bluffclan healer apprentice for too long makes him want to claw at his own fur. That certainly can’t be good. And what did Quillstar say, that Whistleclan disappeared without a trace? That makes even less sense! If Juniperpaw found the old Whistleclan camp in the aftermath of the attack, then surely they'd heard or seen or smelled something. Whistleclan certainly didn’t disappear without a trace, even if their bodies were dragged out to sea. Flarepaw shudders a bit at the memory, the scent of blood heavy in the air, the sand churned up from pawprints of his fighting and fleeing clanmates. They left more than a trace, he’s sure of it.
“Well obviously, Juniperpaw over there got it wrong!” Flarepaw cringes a bit when Daisypaw speaks up, silently praying to Starclan that she won’t cause an inter clan dispute at their first gathering back. “There was a… freak accident,” Daisypaw continues with a little pause. The remaining Whistleclan members agreed that it might be best to obscure the details of the attack, if only because none of them are really sure what they saw, but now Flarepaw’s not certain that was a good idea. “The rest of our clan was swept out to sea, and the three of us only barely managed to escape.”
“And why did you not come to another clan for aid?” Quillstar asks. He is the only leader that looks particularly sympathetic. Shrikestar and Pigeonstar just look calculating.
“Whistleclan didn’t want to appear weak, sir,” Flarepaw explains, trying to exude more confidence than he’s feeling. Truly he’s more intimidated than he’s ever been in his life.
“Well it looks to me as though Whistleclan will never have to worry about appearing weak again,” Pigeonstar says, oozing condescension. “Your so-called clan has no leader, no deputy, and no healer. You are just a band of apprentices playing at being a real clan. We declared Whistleclan to be no more moons ago, and plan to begin dividing up its territory. You three may either join another clan, or leave that territory. It no longer belongs to you.” They smile a bit at this delivery, and Flarepaw remembers Quailfreckle telling him how Pigeonstar was generally disliked. He thinks he understands now.
“WHAT?” Daisypaw screeches, patience snapping, and before Flarepaw can do anything to stop her, she bounds forwards and clambers up the side of the empty stalagmite, much to the shock of the collected cats. Flarepaw’s mouth drops open. This can’t be happening. Pigeonstar is going to kill her!
From her new perch, Daisypaw addresses Pigeonstar directly. “That’s not- that’s just not fair! We’ve worked so hard, we've been training ourselves, Rainpaw even got Starclan’s blessing as a healer apprentice, you can’t seriously be telling us to just stop being a clan!” The Thicketclan leader’s expression hadn’t changed during her outburst, apart from a threateningly raised brow. Then Daisypaw turns to the cats gathered below her.
“Whistleclan is the oldest of the seaside clans, and our founders built the bedrock of the traditions and code that we still hold ourselves to today. Other cats gathered together and started their own clans based on those traditions, but it was still Beetleroot, Hornetswipe, and Curlbracken that founded Whistleclan on the beach those many seasons ago. In Whistleclan, we thrive on stories, stories about our history and those that come to us in dreams and those that we make ourselves. We honor our past and, despite our setbacks in recent seasons, we have hope for our future. We may not have a leader now, we may be just three apprentices, but we’ve managed to make it by ourselves thus far and we plan to build Whistleclan back up to the strength it used to have. We have to honor our history and keep our legacy alive.”
Flarepaw stares up at Daisypaw in awe, her golden fur framed by the unfaltering light of the full moon behind her. She’s incredible, he thinks as he watches her pace around on the small surface of the stalagmite. Tears spring unbidden to his eyes, and he blinks them away. Sometimes Flarepaw has doubts about their ability to keep Whistleclan alive and rebuild it to its former might, but in moments like this, when Daisypaw really gets going, he’s filled with confidence and inspiration. Maybe they really will succeed. Maybe Whistleclan really hasn’t fallen for good.
“You forget yourself, young apprentice!” Pigeonstar yells, shattering the stillness in the aftermath of Daisypaw’s speech. Daisypaw whips around to look at him, glaring and apparently ready to fight. Flarepaw needs to do something. “Daisypaw, c’mon, it's not worth fighting over!” he cries, but she doesn’t back down.
“You have made your point, Daisypaw,” Quillstar adds from his own perch, and Daisypaw turns away from Pigeonstar to look at him, hackles beginning to fall. “I believe that we should give Whistleclan a chance to rebuild. But just know, if you ever decide you want to join a different clan instead, you will always be welcome in Bluffclan. Whistleclan and Bluffclan have been allies for a long time, and I see no reason that should cease now.” Quillstar’s deputy seems like he doesn’t quite agree with that particular pronouncement, but he doesn’t speak up to contradict his leader.
“I’m not gonna lie, I want to see where this is gonna go,” Shrikestar says. “Dawnclan wouldn’t get any of Whistleclan’s land anyway, we don’t share a border, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t give those three a chance to build their clan again. Just don’t come running to Dawnclan if you fail.”
Pigeonstar looks increasingly annoyed at his fellow leaders, but he sees that he has been overruled. “Fine, fine, Whistleclan’s borders can stay where they are. I just hope they’re willing and able to defend them…” He trails off, a threat laced into his words, and Flarepaw shivvers a bit but stands his ground. “Now will someone get that apprentice off the clan pillar for Starclan’s sake.”
